That probably really depends on your audience what kind of monetization scheme makes sense for you, but all of them depend on traffic, getting discovered and having subscribers.

I doubt there's many sponsors for videos hosted on a Peertube instance. Nothing against the technology or the idea of federating (which I like), but telling people to just get off YouTube and switch to Peertube is a very unrealistic and naive view.

I was just referring to the direct monetization which looks to me relatively marginal unless you reach viewers in the 7 or 8 digit numbers at which point most youtubers already have started having other source of revenues anyway which are probably higher than what youtube provides: consulting, physical shows/appearances, sponsorship, merch, own brands, etc.

I understand that network effect is probably more important than anything else but to me content platforms are more a way to get and stay known than a direct source of revenue. Hence the success of instagram and tiktok with the newer gen whose shorter forms of content and lower searchability involve smaller investment and production cost and more immediate followship[1].

[1] people more immediately subscribe for fear to not have to wait to get access to feed again while on youtube it is still relatively easy to find back videos or consult channels without subscribing.

And yet something like this happened for Twitter => Mastodon. And at some point YouTubers did not have sponsors either.

Mastodon is a very tiny tiny sliver of the user base of Twitter and the people who migrated there (myself included) are not “creators” that make money through their audience.

Well there are some, but they have some presence elsewhere including youtube anyway.

Leaving only twitter is relatively easy.